Handling of drill string components in connection with joining of new components to a drill string and releasing of a drill string is to a great extent preformed manually today. Hereby a new drill string component to be joined with the drill string is placed in a drill string position, whereupon it is initially threaded manually and subsequently finally threaded by the rotator equipment of the drill rig. The reverse procedure is performed during the dismounting of the drill string into separate components during for example exchange of drill bit or completed drilling.
Core drilling for the purpose of exploration drilling is often preformed to great depths and with very long drill holes such as thousand of meters or more. Individual drill string components, here normally drill tubes, normally have a length of for example 3 meters. Since exchange of drill bit must be preformed relatively frequently, there is required an extensive handling of the drill string components in connection with taking out the drill string from the drill hole as well as during lowering, for the replacement of drill bits.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,634,443 B1 is an example of the background art. This document describes a handing device for drill string components, wherein drill string components to be joined to the drill string are transferred between a loading position and a drill string position.